The girl who often teased Sophia for being ‘too nice’ sat at her desk, covered in blue ink from her exploded pen. She looked as if someone hit her with spray paint. All over her face, sweater, desk, the floor…
Crap. I can’t concentrate in here. Too many people watching me. I’m scared of being caught.
A few kids nervously laughed.
“Uhh, Mrs. Hooper?” asked Rachel in a timid voice. “My pen exploded. Can I go wash my face?”
The teacher nodded, waving her to go.
Rachel slipped out of her seat, picked her test up off the desk, and brought it to the teacher. “The whole paper’s blue. I’m sorry. Can I have a new one when I get back?”
The teacher stared at her, and the paper for a long moment, clearly baffled at the unusual way the pen had burst. “All right, dear. Go wash your face before it dries.”
Loud heavy metal music erupted over the school’s PA system.
Her classmates might have screamed, but she couldn’t hear them. Mrs. Hooper nearly fell out of her chair.
Uh oh. I definitely messed up. How the heck did a fix spell turn into a weird not-summon? It’s not gonna wear off like an enchantment. Drat! I really need to send it back.
Sophia jumped out of her desk, grabbed her completed test, and jogged to the teacher. She set the paper down and mouthed ‘bathroom?’
Mrs. Hooper glanced at the paper, raised both eyebrows in an expression of impressed surprise, then nodded.
Sophia thanked her, then ran out into the hall. She rushed past Rachel, heading for the school’s front office. The blaring screechy music cut out to silence two seconds before she got there. Both office women stood by the control desk for the announcement system with their backs to the glass wall and door. Sophia cringed. Something pink fell down from overhead, striking the floor in the middle of the office. She gawked at the ceiling—covered with random objects. Staplers, two vases, a paper clip holder, books, papers, and one umbrella clung to the white foam tiles as if superglued.
I made an imp… just without the mean streak.
She raised her arms, pointing both hands at the office, and cast a dispelling charm.
All the stuff abruptly falling to the floor startled the women into screaming.
Sophia rushed away before they noticed her, following a vague sense of direction toward the magic. Commotion in a classroom halfway down the next hall on the left sounded suspicious.
“Ow!” yelled a girl. “Stop pulling my hair!”
“Now what?” muttered Sophia. She crept up to the door and peered in at a seventh-grade room.
The teacher lay asleep across his desk, snoring. Half the students also napped. Two girls with long hair in the middle of the room had been braided together so their skulls touched. Every kid with laced shoes had them tied together. Pens, books, backpacks, papers, and other various junk had floated up to the ceiling and stuck.
Oh no!
Sheer terror at getting in so much trouble they expelled her hurled a time stop spell out of Sophia as instinctively as yanking her hand back from a hot pan. Everything inside the seventh-grade room stopped moving.
She ran in, tossing dispels at all the pranks, starting with the girls braided together. Merely looking at them hurt. After the magic detangled them, she dragged the standing girl around like a department store mannequin and stuffed her into the empty desk behind the girl she’d been braided to. From there, Sophia dispelled levitating objects, knotted shoelaces, and so on.
A snarl came from a bookshelf in the back.
The not-faerie zoomed into the air, jabbing its finger at her. “Stop ruining everything!”
“I can’t let you prank the whole school. You have to stop.”
“No deal. Already paid the tax.”
She furrowed her brow. “What tax?”
“Did your favor. Passage!” The not-faerie puffed out his chest. “Now free to have fun.”
“You aren’t a real… whatever you are. Just a spell running. Magical energy doesn’t pay taxes or make deals.”
He folded his arms.
“Sorry, but I have to end the spell. If you were a real… faerie-goblin, I’d totally make a deal with you, but you’re just loose energy.”
“No!” wailed the faerie. He pointed at her, sending a tingle across the tops of her feet.
She peered down. Ballet flats didn’t have shoelaces to tangle, a fact the faerie appeared not to notice until after attempting to trip her up. Sophia raised her hands toward the errant magical creature. Her hair wrapped around her face like a Nerf headlock.
“Gah!”
Sophia pulled her hair down from her eyes in time to see the faerie disappear out the door. Grumbling, she ran after him, still fighting to get her hair back to normal. The instant she left the room, the time freeze effect stopped. She didn’t wait around to be seen or observe what happened.
Not far from the classroom, the faerie darted into an open locker, slamming the door after itself. She skidded to a stop and yanked the door open. The faerie hovered in the middle of an otherwise empty—unused—locker. He backed up, cowering against the wall. Again, Sophia raised her hands and began to cast a dispel. The faerie launched himself at her face. Instinctively, she ducked. Before she could stand, a force hit her from behind and threw her into the locker, which slammed.
Blind panic took over. She burst into tears, pounding on the door while a momentary nightmare of being stuck there until late at night when Sarah showed up to look for her played out in her head. After a moment, she collected herself.
“I’m being stupid.”
Two deep breaths later, she focused on the mechanism and cast an unlock spell.
The metal door flew open.
Growling, Sophia jumped out into the hall, looking left, then right both ways.
Quiet.
A faint hint of magic seemed stronger to her right. Grumbling, hands balled in fists, she fast-walked down the corridor until noticing a clamor coming from the alcove leading to the cafeteria. She’d already gone past the point of having to explain what took so long for a bathroom break, so she figured better to finish this. No point getting in trouble and failing to stop the mischief she set loose. Maybe she could get out of trouble by claiming a bully shoved her into a locker and closed it.
Technically, not a lie. She didn’t need to specify the bully wasn’t a person.
Metal clattering and shocked gasps led Sophia across the cafeteria to the kitchen.
She stopped short at the door, frozen in utter horror at everything being gooey brown. Gloopy slime coated four kitchen workers, the walls, floor, ceiling, and tables. Once her nose informed her the terrifying substance consisted of nothing more disgusting than chocolate pudding, she relaxed.
The weird little faerie hovered in the middle of the chaos, back turned to the doorway, laughing his butt off at the reactions of the cafeteria workers to the pudding-splosion. Sophia leaned into the room enough to get her arm through the gap in the swinging plastic doors, trying to be as silent as possible.
Sorry little guy. Thanks for helping that boy, but I gotta send you home.
She thrust her hands at it, invoking a dispel.
The faerie emitted a pained wail, then popped into a burst of glowing sparkles. Its energy returned to her, running up her arms as a tingle. Her sense of channeling power into an active spell stopped.
Whew.
“Mary?”
“Yes?” asked another woman.
“What just happened?”
“I’m still trying to work that out.”
“We are covered in pudding,” said an older-sounding woman.
Slurp. “Chocolate.”
Crap! Rewind! Rewind!
She threw magic into the kitchen.
In her haste, she didn’t exactly do what she wanted—rewind time—but instead, rewound the pudding, which reverse-exploded, peeling away from everything and compressing back into the giant cans from whence it came. She’d undone the destr
uction, but all four women remembered everything.
Stunned cafeteria workers exchanged bewildered glances.
The nearest woman turned to face the others. “Did you see pudd—?”
“I saw nothing,” said a grandma-aged woman with reddish hair. “Nothing.”
“Yeah,” replied the third, a tall, older woman whose large nose and skinny body made her look a bit like a bird. “We’ve just been working way too many darn hours.”
Sophia backed away from the doors before they saw her and slouched in relief.
Whew. No more summoning at school. I got so lucky.
14
A Personal Reality
Sam stared between his knees at the television, gripping the PlayStation controller tight.
He lounged in an extreme slouch on his bedroom floor, more lying down than sitting, head resting against the side of the bed. Blix perched above him on the edge of the mattress, little daemon feet dangling on either side of Sam’s head. They co-op played LEGO Marvel Superheroes, taking a break from beating each other up in Street Fighter 5.
Weirdness happened at school earlier. He vaguely remembered taking a flying plate of spaghetti to the face and seeing an ice cream cone stuck to the side of a teacher’s head, but it seemed more like a daydream than reality. Blix explained Sophia did something hilarious, barely able to speak due to how hard he laughed while describing a massive explosion of food flying all over the cafeteria.
Sam didn’t think the imp lied, but it also didn’t sound anything like Sophia to start a food fight. Most likely, she tried to do something else and screwed up. He would have preferred to remember it, but she probably panicked and didn’t think to leave him out of the rewind. Good she undid it, though. The teachers would have given the entire school detention if they couldn’t figure out who started it.
Ronan sat on Sam’s left, absorbed in the PSP, a bowl of pretzels and chips on the rug between them. They’d worked out a rotation for PlayStation time since he lacked a third controller or any games three people could play at once. Ronan didn’t notice—since time flew while playing—but he got longer time slots than Sam or Blix took. Sam could play video games whenever he wanted since he lived there. Blix often stayed up super late to game with headphones while Sam slept. Even though Ronan’s mom got him a PS4 for Christmas, Sam hadn’t bothered changing the times. The only real difference is they could hang out at Ronan’s house and play as well. The boy had a giant house, but it kinda fell apart in places, which made it like an adventure. Sometimes, they stayed home and gamed together virtually. Everyone using separate PlayStations also let Darryl and Jordan join in, usually for Destiny.
His other friends both had to go home earlier since they didn’t know about all the cool stuff or the mirrorverse shortcut. Ronan basically stayed over until bedtime or his mom demanded his return. Whenever Darryl and Jordan came over, Blix had to stay inconspicuous. Even though the boys couldn’t see him, he lurked in the closet or under the bed with the PSP and headphones. They’d notice a PS4 controller floating in midair.
Blix did allow Ronan to see him, though.
Sam loved having one friend who knew about the secret, awesome stuff, even if it occasionally resulted in near death experiences for both of them. His newest friend almost getting stuck paralyzed for years to demonic venom scared him more than having a vampire grab him by the neck. His big sister had basically become a superhero. Everyone called vampires ‘monsters,’ but Sam didn’t think of them as any worse than people. The bad ones just had more ability to do bad stuff—like supervillains.
Turning into a vampire hadn’t changed Sarah much. If anything, she’d become nicer. Problem being, some other bad vampires out there didn’t like her being nice. He wasn’t going to let anyone hurt his big sister—if he could do anything about it. Making friends with a few demons wasn’t a big deal. Mom didn’t really like it, but she also didn’t like kittens. Well, she didn’t have an issue with kittens in general, simply didn’t want one in the house—at least initially. She no longer minded Klepto.
It’s more likely Sarah will scratch up the furniture than the cat, said Dad in the back of Sam’s memory.
He grinned.
Even if associating with demons put him at risk, he didn’t mind. Having a vampire in the house already put them at risk. A nine-year-old boy couldn’t do very much to protect his family without something like a gun, but Mom would totally freak out if he touched one. She’d probably object more to a gun in the house than a demon. Also, guns didn’t work well on vampires, ghosts, or butthead wizards possessing people from across town.
Besides, vampires and demons had a lot in common. People misunderstood them. Sarah proved vampires aren’t any more evil than ordinary people. The Aurélie lady made him feel all sorts of weird whenever he saw her, like a faerie tale princess who wanted to love and protect him. Honestly, he blushed thinking about how she made him feel. Sam wanted to do the protecting, not be a protected child—even if he was only nine. Almost ten. He didn’t have long to wait until June 19th.
He frowned, worried his parents would be sad in June, since Sarah had ‘died’ on the 25th last year, exactly one week after her last day of school. Since she didn’t stay dead, he hoped Mom and Dad would not make a big issue out of her ‘death-i-versary.’ If anything, they should celebrate it as an ‘unbirthday.’ As in undead.
While guiding his LEGO Wolverine down a street, Sam daydreamed about being a vampire and flying around doing nice things for people. Like everything else cool in the world, going vamp would have to wait until he got older. Then again, he didn’t really want to do it—mostly because he had to die first and it would make his parents sad. Still, he could pretend to be a vampire.
“Sam?” whispered Ronan. “There’s something in the closet. I heard it move.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sam mashed a button to beat up a pack of bad guy robots. “Just a voice.”
Blix shot the pack of robots from above using Cyclops’ eye beam laser. All sorts of colors flashed on the screen from the crazy battle. Somehow, Sam managed to keep track of it all, knowing which baddies had the lowest health, and even predicting when they’d attack. He’d played the game enough to see through their routines. After four hours, he understood the AI did the same basic things.
“No, something moved.”
Sam glanced sideways at his friend. Ronan was basically the boy version of Sophia—meaning a little short, a lot skinny, and easily scared. That he also had long blonde hair only strengthened the comparison. He didn’t wear it anywhere near as long as Sophia, only to his shoulders. Dad called him ‘Hanson’ as a joke for some silly reason. Sam hadn’t cared enough to Google or ask about it.
Assuming his friend had seen Klepto or something not really scary, he shrugged. “Probably the cat.”
“Serious, dude. Something in the closet moved.”
“Okay,” said Sam. “Let me know if it starts trying to eat us.”
Ronan exhaled, seemed to find the courage to ignore the closet, and resumed playing the PSP.
Sam steered his LEGO Wolverine into a building to rescue some people.
Blix emitted a strange warble Sam understood to mean “Don’t slice the hostages.”
“I won’t.”
Tiny imp feet tapped him on the head. “I know you know. Wolvie’s got multi-hit arcs when he swings. Can hit the good people by accident.”
Sam held back the urge to sigh. He knew this. Blix knew he knew this. The imp liked to feel important and point out obvious things.
“What’d he say?” asked Ronan.
“Wolverine’s claw attacks are big sweeps that will hurt hostages, too.”
Ronan gawked. “Whoa, really?”
“Yeah, really. We’ve been playing this game for a month and you didn’t realize his claws hit everything around him?”
“I knew they hit every bad guy in front of him. Didn’t think they’d score hits on hostages though.” Ronan rolled his eyes. “So stupid.”
“Not stupid. They want players to be careful and use the quick stab.” Sam headed right for the supervillain boss. “I’ll deal with this guy, you mop up the henchmen.”
“On it!” chimed Blix.
“Uhh, Sam?” asked Ronan, once again sounding worried.
“Yeah?”
“My feet are warm.”
“So, take your socks off.”
“Didn’t wear ’em. Uhh, your closet’s glowing.”
Sam paused the game, earning a startled, “Ack” from Blix. He looked left, past Ronan, at his bedroom closet door. Orangey-red light shone out from under it, almost as if a blast furnace raged inside. He shifted one foot closer to Ronan’s. Sure enough, warmth radiated from the closet strong enough to feel from here.
“Interesting.” Sam raised an eyebrow. “It’s never done that before.”
“Uh oh,” said Blix.
“Is your closet on fire?” Ronan looked back and forth from the glow to Sam.
Sam sniffed. His room smelled the same as normal. “I don’t think so.”
He set the controller on the rug, stood, and crept over to the door. The closer he got, the warmer his toes became… but not painfully so. Standing right outside the closet felt like he’d stuck his feet under a baseboard heater. Definitely not a fire. Fire burned way more. He tested the doorknob by tapping it. Normal, not even warm. Curious, he grasped the knob and turned it.
“Wait!” yelled Ronan.
Sam didn’t.
His closet looked normal—except for a huge hole in the floor leading to a tunnel of black basalt rock. It appeared to be a portal ringed in brilliant red-orange energy, containing a relatively short downhill slope to a much wider cave.
“Whoa,” whispered Ronan.
Sam entered the closet and stuck one foot past the opening. The stone floor felt slightly less hot than a sidewalk in the summer. Exploring strange alien cave systems barefoot didn’t sound like a great idea, but the doorway might disappear if he ran downstairs to grab his sneakers. Going in might also be a bad idea… but curiosity pulled at him. Also, he had a strong, unexplainable feeling it wouldn’t be dangerous.
Vampire Innocent | Book 11 | How To Stop A Vampire War In Six Easy Steps Page 12